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Pentecost is perhaps the first festival appropriated from an ancient tradition to serve the purposes of the new Christian Way.

If we are honest, this parable of the wedding guests is perplexing and almost beyond understanding. It weaves here and there, turning expectations upside down and just when you think “I’ve got it!” – no you haven’t because it twists again.

What impudence of these two upstart fishermen to demand anything of God! These two brothers went to Jesus, not so much with a question or a petition or a prayer, but they went with a demand: “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus and approach the Gospels as though for the first time, something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of the transformation of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault is a masterful guide to Jesus’s vision and to the traditional contemplative practices you can use to experience the heart of his teachings for yourself.

What is seldom noticed by traditional Christians is that consignment to hell is not the payback for “sin”; it is the consequence of not believing that Jesus was the one Anointed by God to return the world to God’s covenantal rule.  If you don’t believe Jesus was the one – according to Matthew – you won’t follow Jesus’ teachings, and when the transformation comes, you will be found in the company of the goats.

The process the early followers of Jesus went through that resulted in the Church of Jesus Christ is fairly long, fairly obscure, and full of pitfalls for those who seek to recreate it.

Gandhi teaches us an important lesson about what to pray for.

Whatever form prayer takes for us, we are in need of its medication.

Good is God…All the time!
I will say it again, Good is God…All the time!
Did you hear something different?

If you are the light of the world, do you attract people to yourself or do you illuminate others?

“I’m worth as much as you,”    while true, Yearns upward much as Eve’s son Cain;    and vainforever proves such self-promotion.

A Story Poem for Proper 16, connecting the question, “Who do You Say that I am?” with Romans 12. 

A Drama for Proper 16.  Shiphrah and Puah
Engaging, humorous, a dialogue between the two midwives in Exodus 1.

This article is a reflective piece about a retreat I led (with a colleague) called “A Time Apart: Creating Sabbaths in Your Life”.  It deals with the intersection of art and oases and how we used a painting by Picasso to discover and elicit the rhythms of our lives.

Paul’s interpretation of who Jesus was probably never crossed paths with the later gospel writers.  Or, if it did, most of his theology was misunderstood.

You have become the most widely known person in the world. And this in spite of the fact that, as my six-year old granddaughter said a few years ago, ‘You don’t hear much about Jesus these days!’

Faith is not about getting our doctrines right. Nobody gets the doctrines right. It’s about doing the right things.

Matthew 16:13-28; Romans 6:5-11 This commentary is going directly through Matthew without regard for the traditional Christian liturgical year, so will not skip to the end of the gospel to Jesus’ “great commission” to “make followers of …